


down in the valley (with whiskey rivers)

by whataboutateakettle



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Relationship(s), Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-16 13:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11829309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whataboutateakettle/pseuds/whataboutateakettle
Summary: Four days before he’s due to get his two year chip, his dad dies.





	down in the valley (with whiskey rivers)

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this months ago when my dad was briefly in hospital for a much less serious issue, and have thus cried many times while writing the first part of this. 
> 
> Title comes from Down in the Valley by The Head and The Heart, a band which always makes me think of Greg for some unknown reason.

**Day 725.**

His phone rings and his dad’s voice is weak and wheezy, barely there at all really, and he’s telling him that they’d called an ambulance because he just couldn’t catch his breath _even with the tank_.

His dad puts a nurse on the phone a moment later, and Greg tries hard to pay attention as she tries hard to find a gentle way to tell him that his father’s lungs were really, truly, giving up this time. He’s already throwing things into a duffle bag as he holds the phone to his ear with his shoulder, tries to think about what else he could possibly need. A couple t-shirts, a toothbrush.

Fuck. Should he bring a suit?

He catches the first flight out of Atlanta the next morning. His dad’s voice is still swirling in his mind as he fidgets in his aisle seat, as he walks through the airport, as he drives his rental straight to the hospital. His dad is happy to see him, Greg knows because he tells him how pointless it was for him to rush across the country like this. His dad is himself, just, you know, the dying version. In return, he tries to be his very best self: helpful, positive, funny. He tries to pretend that telling his dad to listen to the nurse doesn’t drain half the life out of him, tries to avoid looking at the door like he’d love to make a run for it. But for a moment it’s worth it all just to see his dad laugh again.

And then the laugh turns to painful, horrific wheezing, and his dad scrambles to return the oxygen mask to his face.

* * *

 

 

**Day 726.**

He’s spent the night in the hospital, having pretzeled himself into the uncomfortable visitors chair. In the morning, over breakfast of black coffee (him) and an IV line (his dad), his dad starts telling him what to do after he’s gone. They’ve had this conversation a million times, but this time it feels different. It _is_ different, because his dad has to pause every few moment to take a sharp shallow inhale from his mask. His voice is getting weaker, and Greg learns forward to hear him. Something about the home and what to do with the birds.

He tells him they can have this conversation later, when he’s feeling better. _How about never_ , he means. But his dad shakes his head and carries on. And then he’s in the middle of explaining how he’d like to be buried when Greg finds himself crying. He’s not sure when they started, but they are real tears, streaming down his check and he’s doesn’t know how to turn them off.

“Uh, dad,” he interrupts, wipes his eyes with his hand, “Maybe we could just press pause on this for a second.”

“Greg,” his dad says in what he decides is the wheezy, dying version of _you’re an idiot_ , “You can’t pause real life.”

“I know, I know,” he sighs. _I’m sorry_. His dad moves slowly, swaps his mask into his other hand and reaches out towards him. Greg takes his hand.

“I think I’ve done a good job of telling you what I think of you over the years.”

Greg snorts, still teary, “I’m an idiot?”

“I’m proud of you. I’m proud of every single decision you’ve ever made, even the stupid ones.”

He wonders if this is how it ends, in the middle of laughing and sobbing, squeezing his dad’s hand.

“I love you,” he says, the words are quiet but they fill the room, along with the gentle beeps of his dad’s heart monitor, and the slow hiss of the oxygen machine.

“Greg,” his dad says finally, “Can you get the nurse? I need to take a whiz.”

That afternoon, his dad says he’s going to take a nap, tells Greg to go home and check on the birds.  Instead he takes the opportunity to get some actual food, and more coffee, from the cafeteria downstairs. He finds an old National Geographic somewhere, flips through it, reads an article on fossils. He checks the news on his phone, sends a message to a friend back in Atlanta.

This is how it ends: his dad’s monitor starts flat-lining, the piercing endless beep cuts through the room and he’s yelling for help before he’s even fully out of his chair. Nurses and doctors stampede in, and Greg is relegated to the corner of the room, staring at the action as they try and stop the inevitable.

He was supposed to be prepared for this, he thinks. He was supposed to be ready. He even brought the fucking suit.

* * *

He’d read somewhere once that driving while sleep-deprived is more dangerous than driving drunk. And he thinks that having your dad die probably doesn’t help either.

The drive back feels like it happens in slow-motion. He knows his hands are at ten and two, his knuckles white. He knows he hasn’t being paying attention to street signs for the last ten minutes. He takes the next right, then a left, and stops haphazardly by the curb in front of his house. His dad’s house.

And here’s the thing, he’s had some real shitty moments in his life. We’re talking, truly depressing, honest-to-God, capital letter, Shit Shows. And yet he’s never really known what it felt like to be drowning until right now. He feels sick.

No, really. He feels sick.

He clambers to undo his seat-belt and rushes around the back of the car, makes it just in time to throw up on the dry grass by the sidewalk. There’s not much to throw up, coffee and his shitty sandwich from earlier, but he retches a few more times anyway.

He holds himself up, his hands on his knees and takes a few deep breathes before looking up, confronted with a house that’s no longer his dad’s, a home that’s no longer his.

He sits down on the curb, thankful that it’s the middle of the night and his panicked parking and subsequent puking had been relatively quiet.

Should he call his sponsor? Surprisingly, He doesn’t really want to drink right now. He doesn’t really want to do anything.

But if it’s late here, it’s worse in Atlanta, and Greg feels bad for waking the guy up. He’s a decent guy, 10 years older than him, two kids. He likes to golf and he always invites Greg, no matter how many times Greg has told him he can’t think of anything worse. He’s definitely got work in the morning.

Instead he pulls out his phone and sends out a group message. It feels like something he should do eventually, may as well do it now.

There’s a spattering of replies, a combination of kind words and typos, and then nothing, and Greg thinks maybe that’s done then.

He sits on the curb for a while longer, half doing absolutely nothing excepting staring at the night sky and half trying to plan what he should do next. He’ll crash at a motel somewhere, near his dad’s retirement village. And he’ll deal with the rest in the morning.

He’s been telling himself to get up and leave for five minutes, but he’s really about to do it this time, when a car, vaguely familiar, turns into the street. It stops right across the road from his, and White Josh gets out and steps across the dark street. Greg finally stands up.

“Josh is picking up Hector, but they’re on their way,” White Josh says first; his hands are shoved in his short pockets, and he’s rocking a little on his heels, before he lifts his arms and steps towards him. “I’m real sorry, man.”

He accepts the hug. Actually, it’s kind of nice.  

* * *

 

 

**Day 727.**

He can already hear Sinatra and Tormé squawking loudly from inside as he unlocks the door.  Inside the light is still on and everything else is pretty much the same as it always has been. Like no one had bothered to tell this place to stop being a home.

On the coffee table is a half-drunk glass of whiskey, and Greg stands there, middle of the room, and stares at the glass for a good two minutes before he moves to pick it up.

It’s the good stuff, he can smell it. Years of serving alcohol, and also drinking it, means this kind of stuff is imprinted in his brain. He wonders where the bottle is. Whether his dad knew this was going to be his last drink.

He tips the rest of the whiskey into the sink. Then grabs another glass and fills it up with water and downs that in one long gulp. Then another.

Back in the living room, he sits down on the sofa, where his Dad was probably watching TV 48 hours ago. He takes a long deep breath, finds the very act to be ironic.

He sits still for a little while longer, then gets up. There’s gotta be something he can do, something to keep busy. Sinatra (or is it Tormé? He never told his dad this but he could never tell them apart) squawks again. Oh right. Feed the birds.

He’s putting the bird food away when the doorbell rings. He’s so caught up he doesn’t even hear it at first, and then it rings again.

“Coming!” He yells, “I’m-”

He opens the door.

Rebecca Bunch is standing there, eyes wide like she wasn’t actually expecting him to open the door. She’s holding... _is that a casserole?_

“Rebecca?” He asks, even though she’s standing right there in front of him. 

“I, uh, I heard. About your dad. Greg, I’m _so_ sorry!”

He narrows his eyes a little, wonders when is a good time to mention that they haven’t spoken in like 18 months. He wonders who told her, how she even knew he was _here.  
_

She looks... _fuck_ , he doesn’t even want to go there. She looks like a glass of salt water in middle of the fucking desert.

“Do you want to come in?” he asks her, steps aside before she actually answers. She walks inside, looks around before she looks back at him, holds out the casserole. 

“Uh, this is for you. Don’t worry, Paula made it, not me.”

“Great thanks, last thing I need right now is food poisoning,” he starts to laugh, then bites it back immediately. Is that still something they do?

“So uh, you’re going to have to pack this all up?” Rebecca asks, and immediately winces a little, like she thinks she said the wrong thing. Truthfully, there's no right thing she could have said right now, so he doesn't hold it against her. 

“Yeah they gave me until the end of the week to clear it all out.”

There’s a beat and Tormé (Sinatra?) squawks in the cage, and for once he’s glad to hear it.

“What’s going to happen to them?” She asks.

“Bird Sanctuary. Dad’s choice,” he can smile at this, “No way he trusted me with them.”

She lets herself laugh at that, but it’s too much, too loud, and he knows she’s pretending.  

She stays only a few minutes longer, because it’s her lunch break and Paula’s waiting, no actually she has a meeting. Yes, that. She asks how long he’s in town for and when he tells her, just a week, he has to get back to Emory, she laughs again.

* * *

 

 

**Day 728.**

“Two days ago my dad died.” He scans across the room, not wanting to actually look anyone in the eye. This is the first time he’s said the words, and they tumble out of his mouth like they’ve been waiting. Two days of his friends being annoying kind, of packing up boxes and throwing away garbage. He shakes his head; he’s not going to cry in an AA meeting. He knows it’s not the worst thing in the world, but he’s given himself a limit and he’s getting good at those now.

“I know that's not how you’re supposed to start. Hi, I’m Greg. I’m an alcoholic, but that really doesn’t feel like the most important thing about me right now. Not even in this room. But uh, I’m starting to think that maybe something is wrong with me because I haven’t wanted a drink in the last two days. Like, at all. It makes no sense to me, because I’m an alcoholic, I don’t know how to _not_ want a drink. And yet here I am.”

An man, a bit older than him judging by the greys, walks up to him as he’s getting coffee after the meeting. He doesn’t recognize him, but then again it’s been a while since he’s been in this room.

“I lost my mom last year and I felt exactly like you. You just have to give it time,” he says softly, reaches across to grab his own paper cup.

“Until I feel better?”

“No,” the man smiles at him, but it’s sad. “Until you get to the hard part.”

* * *

It’s just after 6 in the evening when someone knocks on the door. He’s standing between boxes of his dad’s stuff that he’d brought back to his motel room and he’s trying to decide whether he wants to order pizza or Chinese for dinner. He opens it without checking, and doesn’t realise until he does so that he had been holding his breath.

It’s Heather. Thank God. He couldn’t take another round of brotherly advice, or casseroles or back pats. Heather is exactly what he needs.

“I figured wine was a no go so I bought the second best,” She says holding up a large paper bag, “Donuts.”

He stares at her, “I love you,” he deadpans, before grinning and letting her in.

“So I read this article about the grieving behaviors of animals,” Heather says as she sits herself down on his queen-sized bed, “and there are horses that will develop actual symptoms of depression when their friend dies. Like the whole shebang: loss of appetite, not sleeping, stops being interested in like horse stuff.”

He stands there for a minute, watches her ramble on, tries to remember when the last time they talked was. They exchange emails all the time; it’s as if he signed up to the Heather Davis newsletter. Every few days she appears in his inbox with a fun fact or to share something she’s read or a YouTube video. It’s nice. But also it means they haven’t had a proper conversation in a while.

“Greg?”

He snaps back to her. “Hm?”

“I said, would you rather watch Chopped or this true crime story about a girl who murdered her roommate with a stapler?” she nods towards the TV mounted on the beige motel walls.

“You want to watch TV?” he asks her.

“I figured you’d be done talking about it,” she shrugs, seems casual about it. But he notices that she tucks some hair behind her hair nervously and he remembers she’s just as new to this whole thing as he is.  

He definitely _is_ done talking about it, that’s for sure. But he glances around the room, at the boxes stacked up around him.

“You wanna go for a walk?”

Heather shrugs again, and gets up off the bed.

“Take the donuts,” he gestures behind her.

They walk around for a while, then down to the park and sit on a bench and eat donuts. He tells her about his meeting, and about Rebecca and her casserole, about taking the birds to the sanctuary, about his suit. Then he tells her about Atlanta, about his classes. 

Heather listens, adds some sly commentary at the right moments, and before he knows it he’s laughing. He’s genuinely laughing. He swallows it down a second later, because it still doesn’t feel right. But it did feel good. And Heather offers him a knowing smile, lets him have the last donut.

* * *

 

 

**Day 729.**

He runs out of clean shirts. He’s not even sure how it happened but every shirt he brought with him now smells of sweat and birds.

He got rid of most of his stuff when his dad moved to the home, and even if there was anything left it would now be packed together in the boxes and suitcases with all his dad’s things and he can’t bring himself to reopen them just yet.

Instead he messages the guys to see if anyone has an extra t-shirt that would fit him. White Josh offers to swing round on his way to work.

40 minutes later there’s a knock on his motel door and White Josh is standing there with a bag in one hand and a Boba in the other. He holds out both to Greg.

“The shirts are Darryl’s, because I figured you’d want sleeves,” he says, grinning, “He doesn’t need them back though, so you can do whatever you want with them.”

“And the Boba?” Greg asks waving the drink gently in his hand.

White Josh shrugs, “When in West Covina.”

Greg shrugs back, takes a sip of the tea as he steps back and lets him inside the room. There are still boxes around the place, but they're all slightly more organized than before and this afternoon he’s going to take them to a storage space he’s rented out. After that he needs to go see Father Brah about his dad’s funeral.

* * *

 

 

**Day 730.**

On the day he’s supposed to get his two year chip, he wakes up feeling like he’s been run over by a million trucks.

He wants to drink. No, he wants to drink so much that his body actually turns _into_ alcohol and he can pour himself down a storm drain.  

He gets up; he drinks three glasses of ice cold water, just to feel the burn down his throat. He goes to the earliest meeting he can find.

He talks, about how he’s feeling, about his dad, about his two years. They give him a little plastic chip, he’ll get his real one back in Atlanta where he’s a regular.

He wonders around the town, figures that if he doesn’t stop moving he can’t stop to drink. He can hear his dad in his head calling him an idiot.

Then he rounds a corner, and realizes he’s ended up at the duck pond. And realises that Rebecca Bunch is sitting on one of the benches eating a salad out of a takeaway box. And realizes that God does exist, because He definitely hates him.

Rebecca hasn’t seen him yet, she’s scrolling on her phone between bites and he tries to imagine what kind of crisis she’s going through now. He's surprised she's even alone, since she used to be so bad at it. He could turn around now, if he wanted to. He could leave and go somewhere else. Heather had told him that Rebecca has started seeing a therapist. White Josh and Hector told him about the almost wedding, which sounded so insane; he partly believes they made it up. Or maybe he just wants to believe that.

“Hey Bunch,” he says as walks up to her. She swallows her bite, looks up at him with wide eyes.

“Greg, Oh my god, _hi_?!” There’s a question in there, and oh man, he wishes he knew the answer.

“Hey, so the funeral is tomorrow. My dad didn’t really like you at all but it’d mean a lot to me if you came?”

He sees her processing the comment which he hadn’t really vetted before it exited his mouth, lets it go, and nods up at him. “Of course. I will definitely be there. Do you want me to do anything or bring anything...?”

He wants her to kiss him. He can remember how good it felt to kiss her. And also, he wants a drink. _So_ badly.

He wants his dad back.

He imagines there’s a world in which some or all of these things happen. In his pocket he runs his finger around the edge of his chip. But it’s not this one.

“No,” he shakes his head slowly, “I’ll see you there. But thank you, really.”

He steps away from her, once, twice, before he actually turns around.

He goes back to the motel. He doesn’t stop, he doesn’t drink.

* * *

 

 

**Day 731.**

He’s booked a flight for right after the funeral because he can’t think of anything worse than staying in this town a day longer, and honestly he’s been counting down the hours until he can pick up his bag from the motel, drop his rental car at the airport and go back to what his life is now.

But first, he needs to get through this day.

He doesn’t actually have a home here anymore, so there’s no real wake, but he does invite everyone to Home Base for a drink. He buys the first round and it’s the most amount of money he’s ever spent at a bar without actually having a drink himself. He’s still feeling the craving from yesterday, though it’s somewhat diminished by the distraction of, you know, burying his father.

He focuses on the people who showed up though, which is a lot. He’s barely got enough friends to fill a hand, and his dad had even less. But White Josh brought Darryl, and Hector brought his mom, and Josh brought both his parents even though they’d only met his dad a couple of times and never really hit it off. His mother is here with Stew and Lily and Mason. Heather’s here, and Rebecca, and Valencia, which he still finds a bit weird.  He says hello and thank you and goodbye to as many people as he can manage, and Paula, despite all their differences, takes over hosting duties and directs everyone where they need to go.

Afterwards, after Father Brah says all the right things, and after his dad is lowered into the ground, and after he receives an obscene amount of hugs from people as they slowly retreat, he finds himself standing above an open hole in the ground. This is the part where he could say something to his dad, some parting words that have some special meaning. But his dad will never hear them, and they’re not about to make him feel any better. So he just stands there silently for a minute, thinks of his dad’s laugh. Not the wheezy one from a few days ago, the one from when Greg was a kid, when his dad’s laugh would bellow through the room like thunder, except it was never scary it was warm and infectious and great. It was a good laugh. 

When he gets back to his car, his friends are standing there waiting for him, waiting to say goodbye. They make him promise he’ll stay in touch more (Josh), that he’ll come back home soon (Hector), that he’ll look after himself (White Josh), that he’ll talk to someone if he needs to (Heather, with a punch to his shoulder and warning not to be “all stupid and macho and ignore your emotional wellbeing, okay”), that he’ll remember they’re all there for him (Rebecca, before she gives him another hug). Valencia stands in the back silently, and gives him nothing but a small polite smile, which he's even more grateful for. 

They stand in a herd watching as he drives off out of the cemetery grounds, and he watches them in his rear-view mirror until he turns the corner and then there’s nothing but forward.

Forward to the motel, where his bags are packed, his own duffle bag and another, filled with a few of his dad’s things he wanted to take with him.

Forward to the airport, where he drops of his rental car and buys a stale $6 sandwich before his flight.

Forward to Atlanta.

As the plane takes off over the San Gabriel Valley, Greg stares out the window tries to put his life back into something that makes sense. He thinks about his next class assignment, about the classmate’s birthday he missed this week. He thinks about calling his sponsor, which he’s gonna do as soon as he gets to Atlanta. He thinks about leaving West Covina and he’s got no idea what could bring him back here again. But he knows that, eventually, something will.


End file.
